


Benefaction

by RedRoseWhite



Category: Star Wars - All Media Types, Star Wars Sequel Trilogy
Genre: Abortion, Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Dark, F/M, Force Bond (Star Wars), No Kids - Freeform, Sith Code, That's Not How The Force Works, Unplanned Pregnancy, Weirdness
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-07-25
Updated: 2020-07-25
Packaged: 2021-03-05 22:34:02
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,340
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25502932
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/RedRoseWhite/pseuds/RedRoseWhite
Summary: Rey is pregnant and wishes she wasn't. She summons Kylo Ren to Moraband and asks him to help her.This is probably the weirdest thing I have ever written, but also the most beautiful and cherished, which is why I dedicate it to my favourite fic author.
Relationships: Rey/Ben Solo | Kylo Ren
Comments: 23
Kudos: 50





	Benefaction

**Author's Note:**

  * For [quamquam20](https://archiveofourown.org/users/quamquam20/gifts).



She can be seen from far away, streaming in white among the ruddy dust, her clothing like flags that flutter, then wane and fall as the wind dies once more. 

The way the air moves here is _wrong_ , and it’s a wrongness that he knows so well. This rhythm is known to his lungs, to his heart and his blood. The way he would shudder and jerk when Snoke took handless hands to his body. Dancing to the music of the Force as it twisted love and life itself into chaos, rot and death, like a flame that warps a blade. 

This air and this dust and the dull starlight in the valley should have nothing to do with her. 

And yet.

This is where she asked him to meet her. The other meetings weren't enough. Not the quiet murmurs between them, where he would be among the might of his fleet while she languished in her modest quarters, or in a landscape of trees and grass. In person. She said he had to come and be with her, and she used so few words but just the tone of her voice was more than he could bear. In the Silencer he realized that it was the longing, that was the thread that beckoned him. She had learned so early and so hard to never ask for anything. To go without. It came so naturally to her now that not-asking and not-wanting were part of everyday life. But she had wanted this from him. She had asked. As though he was the only exception she’d ever found.

How could he say no?

She knows she is supposed to be afraid. One late night while the others were sharing secondhand stories, one of the others told of how a powerful Master with the name of Yoda had come to this place. He’d met the form of Darth Bane wrapped in a cloak of star-dashed deep space, and had come through his trial alive, but more shaken than someone who’d lived centuries should ever be.

She knows this is where the deep magic is. She knows that she can touch it. So can he. She prays that it will obey his hands. She thinks nothing of praying to anything that can hear, because for all the things she knows of Moraband, there are a hundred thousand things that she doesn’t. The red wind kicks up again, obscures his inky lumbering form as he comes, and because her eyes can’t really see him anymore, she closes them and finds him in the Force. He is regal and tumultuous and everything she wants to look upon. Especially now.

~*~

It’s been eating Death for so long, the scent of Life almost eludes it. Herbal and clean, sweetly warm like the short minutes when the wind is quiet and the punishing sun is actually kind, which happens once in a century. It creeps up the ridge to gaze at the figures in the valley, one black and one white. Both lively and clever, but it shall have the element of surprise. It will grasp the small one and siphon the life from it, taking a big bite and then sucking all the pulp through its teeth. The bigger one will make a much longer meal. Longer than hours and hours. It will only get sweeter and sweeter as time passes. Days.

~*~

The very first thing she does when he arrives, is cry. The very first thing he does is caress her tears. He pulls off his glove and touches the wetness from her face with his fingers and disappears them in his mouth and she doesn’t find it strange. Another gust of wind, another gout of ruddy sand. She has to tell him now or her courage will fail and she never will. But he is so beautiful. This moment could be beautiful, if they chose to make it so. 

“Kylo Ren,” she says formally, tears still on her face and his tongue, the same tears. “I have come to exchange a gift.”

“What is it,” he asks, more roughly than he means to. Her eyes are lowered now, and her hands come up to clasp his. Skin against leather and skin against skin. He wishes he’d made his voice softer for her. The moment is passing as all moments do. Then she places his hands on her abdomen, and his breath leaps and kicks at his throat. 

“This… is not mine,” he tells her, wild-eyed.

“It will be, if you want it,” she whispers. “Use the magic of this place, and take it from me.”

“Force…..” he pants. Panicking. Of all the things he imagined, it was never this. A grain of light inside her, a presence, that she wants him to absorb.

“Yes, it is strong in the Force.” More tears are spilling. “It will make you stronger. Maybe even strong enough to esc-”

“I won't do this,” He says, wrenching his hands from hers. 

“It’s not a sacrifice, Kylo,” She tells him, clinging. Two fingers of hers are hooked over his, despite his efforts. “I do not want this, it will never come to be. Take it for yourself, and unburden me. I told you. This is an exchange. Do you know the Sith magic, or not?” He does, he does, of all the filthy cursed things inside his head, this is one. _Do you know the Sith magic, or not._ He knows.

  
  


_She’d been drinking, not as much as some but more than others. Everyone was becoming unhinged by the war. The running and the shooting and the burials for friends. X-wings turned to fireballs. Every Benduday there were idiotic campfires and alcohol and they would all pretend they were normal for a few hours. He was a mechanic with a voice like forest moss, like the moss on the log she’d bent over to let him take her, wishing he’d press down on the nape of her neck like he was trying to snap it, imagining that he was someone else, someone she wanted. She thought he’d agreed to finish on her back, with his hand, but he didn’t. Two weeks later, her bleeding didn’t come, and then it didn’t come, and then it still didn’t come. She avoided Leia as much as she could, using the texts as an excuse, sometimes crying behind the covers. When she saw this page, between the scolding and scandalized passages on Dark Side Seeding and Sex Magic, more tears came, but of relief._

Now he understands all of the crying. This goes so far down, into the secrets and the tenderness, tears are inevitable. Now he understands. How fitting, he thinks bitterly. A child who should never have been born, becoming one with a child who will never be. 

Somehow she’s pressed her body up against his; did he let her? His arms are around her as if they just wanted to be there and he did not tell them what to do. They’re as defiant and disobedient as she is. But he can't regret it, because this is all the warmth he gets to have; an embrace purposed for dark magic and the theft of life. Truly holding her under a starlit sky, swooping kisses that steal her breath, cupping her cheeks in gentle palms, those hopeful things belong to someone else, never him. A man who lost his name. 

Among the tombs of the Sith lords, Kylo Ren breathes in the scent of the scavenger’s hair as an anchor, and plunges into the mire of Dark Side energy, filling his mind with the presence of the most ruthless, embracing atrocity. His hands stop clasping her shoulder blades and he moves them to the small of her back, where they need to be. He feels for the Light that took hold in her, and with his mind he pries open a sinister maw in his Force-being, and begins to swallow it up as a black hole siphons a nearby star.

  
  


His effort to resist was so small. When he stops trying to pull his hands from hers, she knows. She steps to him, and his arms come up around her as naturally as new growth on a vine crawls across a tree. Is it a lie, that he is only doing this for the code he lives under? He’s honour-bound to collect and seek power, to fill himself with mightiness that he hurls at the galaxy until it crumples and kneels into something he can own. Take a purposeless mistake and use it to conquer again, to make the men at his right hand smile. 

Then she feels his intake of breath on the crown of her head. He’s nuzzling her hair like a bridegroom, and she knows for certain now the power-hunger is a lie. It’s because she needed, because she asked. She closes her eyes and wishes on every grain of dust around them that he might do that to her again. Then his hands are sliding down her back, and a great hunger opens up nearby. The part of her that lives always in the Force starts to tremble and she feels the familiar defiance rising; she pushes it down, making herself stay still and observant. 

_The Dark Side belongs here as well,_ she tells herself.

_That’s right, balance in all things,_ she hears, in a voice she doesn’t know. She has an impression of a tall man in black who isn’t Kylo, but echoes him. _Just… mind your left flank._

Then, Sith spoken in her ear, and the other presence is gone. Nothing remains but the heart-deep ache that comes from watching fresh hope die, which is what it means to inhabit the Dark Side, to invite despair. Kylo’s voice in Sith sounds like the part of him that watched her cry on Ilum and didn’t care.

_Tegu natura pasuo je'as nun_ , he whispers.

Let life pass into me

_Galez tave jen' garthaz kristi tave irus._

May the Dark Side eat the Light

_Tave sutjaza iv dtaesia buti anga kia nun_

The gate of creation is open to me

_Ari ir Meistras iv akuyi_

Lord and Master of the Force

_Nu prasasja sis midwan vi nuyak savas_

I claim this power as my own

Pulling this life from her is making him feel a heaviness that lies beyond exhaustion. It feels strange that the dust-storms have calmed. Just a little more, the thinnest thread taut between his Force signature and hers, and then something heavy-boned and vicious leaps upon his cloak. 

~*~

It goes for the big one first, to take it down so it can’t shield the little morsel. It tries to bite down into a shoulder, right at the joining of the neck, but the fabric is armour-like, thicker than most who come to this planet. Travelers wear different things than they did two generations ago. It tries a second time, sweeping its tail to catch the little one with its spikes. The female leaps out of the way with the same nimble quickness of that tiny green thing from years ago, but the longest spike slices across the top of her left foot and she cries out. It hasn’t been able to get a good bite on the male yet. It extends its claws all the way out and finally pierces, but this is only to get purchase to launch itself to the ground and prepare to pounce at a different angle. The male’s back arches and rolls and he roars and brings up his weapon. It’s already on a trajectory to dodge the blade but instead of attempting an actual sweeping blow like most do with these swords of light, he _throws_ it to the female. It has an unusual hilt and spins in an unpredictable arc and slices tendon and flesh and bone in midair and when the female approaches with it in her hand, there is no strength left to evade the most merciful stroke. 

~*~

“I have bacta packs,” He murmurs. “Can you walk?” His eyes go to the clotting slash on her ruined boot, but he is thinking about the places where he had his hands on her. He will think about them for days. 

She breathes deeply. Squeezes her own knees. Lifts her head, like she always does. Persisting. “Yes. Can you?”

He is so tired. He straightens and the gouges on his back feel like someone has tapped his lit saber there. The pain is thickened with the power he took, the two things couple beneath his skin as they have his whole life. The first few steps are limping, but then he settles into discomfort and they walk steadily together towards his craft. The stars meet the horizon ahead of them, curving like a knife. They are halfway there when he touches her arm and asks her; “Does… does it hurt?” 

She glances down at the flourishing red on her leggings. Gladness blooms. Elation. What they did was enough.

“No,” she says. 

He believes her.

When the next dust storm comes, he lets her sit in the Silencer while he shelters near the wing. He tears his cloak into strips for her to sit on and she takes them without comment. After the settling, she emerges with some tied around her waist, and the others gathered in her hands. Digging is not possible here, but they use the Force to move a large stone and place the rags underneath.

“My foot is better,” she says quietly after they’ve had some ration sticks and water, perched on top of the Silencer. “I’m walking back to my ship.” He pretends that he needs to get down to adjust something in the cockpit to prepare for takeoff. She hops to the ground and his hand shoots out and he pulls her over just enough to nudge her hair with his nose. Then he turns his back to her and she turns hers to him, and for another day, death swallows life on Moraband. 


End file.
